- April 23, 2015
- 1:32 pm
- John Caltagirone
- no comments
Happy Belated Earth Day!
Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22nd worldwide (just yesterday). Campaigns are held in cities all over the world encouraging citizens to plant a tree, use public transit and help beautify the city through restoration of the cities
While this one day is dedicated to bringing awareness to the importance of conservation of our natural resources and the planet, many businesses have made this a staple of their supply chain. Below are companies that have presented themselves as leaders in the supply chain sustainability:
- Unilever: The big time British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company has for long been a poster child of reducing environmental impact. They especially make the effort to tackle climate change with by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Especially in that of transportation and distribution, where there is a large dependency on fossil fuels (roughly 90%). That being said, Unilever has pushed for alternative transport methods like rail to transport goods. Moreover Unilever launched an internal transport management organization, UltraLogistik, which manages the movement of goods across Europe in the most efficient and way.
- Diageo: The alcoholic beverage company in 2014 decided to commit to improve their sustainability efforts through their supply chain. It was reported that the company was able to increase the amount of energy used from renewable sources. One of their main goals was to eliminate overall waste to landfills. They began eliminating waste on a whole in the supply chain, for example, new beer membrane filtration systems at their breweries eliminated the use of kieslguhr. Alternatively, instead of taking things to landfills for waste produced they looked for agricultural uses for waste, such as using by-products of distilling and brewing are now used as animal feed for farmers.
- H&M: The fashion giant had a rude awakening after the 2013 Bangladesh building collapse that housed a number of retail clothing factories. As a result, CEO H&M began the move to not only improve worker conditions in factories, but also improve sustainability across the company. For example, H&M is being more conscious in their use of materials to make sure fashion is sustainable. Their goal by 2020 is to use cotton that only comes from sustainable sources. A number of products are now made from recycled plastic, wool, polyester and polyamide as well as organic hemp, linen, and silk.
These three examples go to show that all across the supply chain are there possibilities to become more sustainable and conscious of the environmental impact of business.
-Riti Patel, Assistant, SVCC
Inspired by:
http://www.supplychain247.com/article/earth_day_and_the_sustainable_supply_chain